CHAPTER XLVI.
‘To hear an open scandal is a curse;But not to find an answer is a worse.’
‘To hear an open scandal is a curse;But not to find an answer is a worse.’
‘To hear an open scandal is a curse;But not to find an answer is a worse.’
‘To hear an open scandal is a curse;
But not to find an answer is a worse.’
Mrs. Prior, thus forcibly ejected (ejections are the vogue in Ireland), commences her return journey to Crosby Park, smarting considerably under her wrongs and the big umbrella she is holding over her head. She has gone but a little way, however, when, on suddenly turning a corner, she finds herself face to face with Wyndham.
He has evidently been walking in a great hurry, but as he sees her he comes to a dead stop. All his worst fears are at once realized. The fact is that Crosby had missed Mrs. Prior at luncheon hour—a most unusual thing, by the way, for her to be absent,for she dearly loved a meal—and he had asked Miss Prior where she was. Miss Prior had said she did not know—hadn’t the faintest notion—perhaps gone for a prowl and forgotten her way home. Crosby somehow had felt that the fair Josephine was lying openly and freely, and had at once given a hint to Wyndham of Mrs. Prior’s conversation with him on the previous night, even suggesting that Mrs. Prior’s unusual absence from luncheon might have some connection with the Cottage. The result of all of which is that Mrs. Prior now finds herself looking into her nephew’s eyes and wondering rather vaguely what the next move is going to be.
His eyes are distinctly unpleasant. They had been anxious—horribly anxious—when first she saw them; but now they seem alive with active rage.
‘Where have you been?’ asks he immediately, his face set and white. Crosby, then, had been quite right in his suggestion.
‘I have been doing my duty,’ returnsMrs. Prior, who has pulled herself together. Her tone is stern and uncompromising.
‘You have been at the Cottage?’
‘You have guessed quite correctly.’
‘You have seen that poor girl, then, and——’
‘I have seen that most wretched girl, and told her my opinion of her.’
Wyndham makes a sharp ejaculation. ‘You spoke to her, insulted her, that poor child?’ He feels that reproach is no longer possible to him. What has she said? What, indeed, has she left unsaid? Great heavens, what monsters some women can be!
‘I explained to her her position. Not that she needed explanation, in spite of all her extremely clever efforts at an innocent bearing. I passed over that, however, and told her—hoping that perhaps she had some real feeling for you, though I understand that class of person never has any honest feeling—that beyond all doubt Lord Shangarry would disinherit you if he heard of your connection with her.’ She pauses here. Thisis her trump card, and she looks straight at Paul as she plays it.
It proves valueless. He passes it over as though it were of no consequence whatever.
‘I don’t know what to say to you,’ says he, struggling with his passionate rage, and grief, and shame. ‘I hardly know how to condemn you strongly enough. I wish to God you were not a woman, and then I should know what to do. This girl you have so insulted is a girl as good and pure as the best girl you have ever met, and yet you have gone down there’—pointing in the direction of the Cottage—‘and deliberately hurt and wounded her. I wonder you had the courage to do it. Are you’—growing now furious—‘a fool that you couldn’t see how sweet and gentle and innocent she is?’
‘Is it your intercourse with this sweet and gentle and innocent girl that has made you so extremely rude?’ asks his aunt in her low, well-bred voice. ‘If so, I consider I have done an extra duty by my visit to her. It may have results. Your disinheritance by Shangarry,for example, is sure to have an effect upon her. I am afraid, after all, it is you who are the fool. In the meantime, Paul, I can quite see that your infatuation for an extremely ordinary sort of girl has blinded you to her defects. Some of these people, I am told, quite study our manners nowadays; but she lacks distinction of any sort. That you happen to be in love with her at present of course prevents your seeing these faults.’
‘You seem so remarkably well up in the affair,’ says Wyndham, who could now have cheerfully strangled her, ‘that I suppose it will be quite superfluous to tell you that love has no voice in the matter. I am not in love with her, and she most positively is not in love with me.’
Mrs. Prior makes a contemptuous movement of her thin shoulders.
‘So very old,’ says she. ‘Do you suppose, my dear Paul, with the stake you have in view, that I expected you to say the truth—to tell me that you had fallen violently in love with this little paltry creature, who hascome out of no one knows where, except yourself, to go back to no one knows where when you are tired of her?’
‘Look here,’ says Wyndham, driven beyond all courtesy by some feeling that he can hardly explain, ‘I think you have the worst mind of any woman I have ever met. I see now that it is useless to try to convince you; but remember—remember always’—he makes a distinct pause, as if on purpose, as if to fasten the words on her mind—‘what I say to you now—that anyone who calls Ella Moore anything less than the best woman on earth—lies!’
‘Your infatuation has gone deep,’ says Mrs. Prior. ‘Few men would speak so strongly in favour of the virtue of their—friends.’
‘I understand your hideous hint,’ says Wyndham, who has now grown cold and collected. ‘You are a woman, and it is hard to tell a woman that she lies. But if you were a man, I shouldn’t hesitate about it.’
‘As I tell you, she has not improved your manners,’ says Mrs. Prior, with a bitter smile. She has not dreamt the affair would take this turn. She has believed that Paul, through dread of Shangarry’s displeasure, would at the most have made light of the matter, have parried the attack, and perhaps have sworn fresh allegiance to Josephine on the head of it. That he should defend this ‘creature’ and defy her, his aunt, because of her—— The situation has become strained beyond bearing.
‘If you do not love her, and she does not love you, and is not even your friend,’ says she sneeringly, ‘what is she to you?’
‘My tenant—neither more nor less.’
‘You mean to tell me, on your honour, that she pays you rent?’
‘Certainly she does.’
‘She is abonâ-fidetenant, nothing more? Then, if so, why all this mystery? Why did you give me to understand weeks ago that she was a man?’
‘You understood that for yourself. Andwith regard to the mystery, it seems that she is desirous of privacy.’
‘How very modest, and what an extraordinary tenant to pick up! May I ask where you first heard of her? By advertisement?’
‘No.’
‘How, then?’
For a moment Wyndham hesitates. Hesitation is supposed to lead to ruin, but Wyndham comes out of it sound in wind and limb. His mind had suffered a shock as it fell back upon that tragic scene in the Professor’s room, but recovered from it almost immediately.
‘You may have heard of Professor Hennessy,’ says he—‘a very distinguished man. He told me of her just before his death. Now’—sarcastically—‘have I answered enough of your questions? Is your conscience quite satisfied as to your duty?’
‘It is open to anyone to make light of sacred subjects,’ said Mrs. Prior, with dignity. ‘Duty to me is the one sacredthing in life. I have taken this matter in hand, and, in spite of all you have said, Paul, I may as well warn you that I shall not take your word for it, but shall sift it steadily to the bottom. I consider that my duty to both you and to my daughter.’
‘To Josephine?’
‘Yes, to Josephine. Are you prepared to say that you have no duty towards her?’
‘Not that I am aware of.’
‘After all these years? After all Shangarry has hinted and said? After all the notoriety, the talk, the gossip, of our world? That a man should pay pointed attentions to a girl for two years—should come and go, be received at her mother’s house, and escort her to balls and concerts and to theatres—is all that to go for nothing? Is my poor girl to be cast aside now as though nothing had occurred——’
‘If you are alluding to Josephine,’ says Wyndham coldly and calmly, ‘I can’t see that anything has occurred to cause her annoyance of any kind. I am afraid you aremisleading yourself. You ought to speak to your daughter, and she, no doubt, will post you up about it. I, for my part, can assure you that there is nothing between us, nor has there ever been. Your daughter is as indifferent to me as’—emphatically—‘I am to her.’
He feels abominably rude as he says this, but he feels, too, the necessity for saying it. And, after all, the onus of the rudeness lies with her. Mrs. Prior is silent for a moment, more from anger than from inability to speak; then she breaks out:
‘I shall write to Shangarry.’
‘You can write,’ says Wyndham quietly, ‘to anyone on earth you like.’
‘You distinctly, then, decline to carry out your engagement to my daughter?’
‘My dear aunt, surely you exaggerate? When was there any engagement?’
‘It was the same thing. You paid her great attention, and Shangarry has set his heart on it.’
‘I am sorry for Lord Shangarry.’
‘You refuse, then?’
‘Distinctly,’ says Wyndham. He lifts his hat and hurries past her. She waits a little, watching him until he disappears round the corner that will lead him to the Cottage.